​Voiceprint harvesting – the next frontier in data privacy war

Corporations and governments alike are hungry for data on people. In addition to internet behavior records and mobile phone metadata, there is a little-known digital bounty they are after – voiceprints – and they’re harvesting them in their millions.

Corporate and government
databases in the US, Europe and elsewhere contain more than 65
million samples of people’s voices, AP reports, citing interviews
with dozens of industry representatives. Voiceprints are
increasingly used for user identification, much like people
recognize each other by voice.

"There's a misconception that the technology we have today is
only in the domain of the intelligence services, or the domain of
'Star Trek,'" said Paul Burmester, of London-based
ValidSoft, a voice biometric vendor. "The technology is here
today, well-proven and commonly available."

Last year the industry brought in revenue of just under $400
million, according to estimates voiced by Dan Miller, an analyst
with Opus Research in San Francisco. In 2015, it is expected to
skyrocket to between $730 million and $900 million.

"The general feeling is that voice biometrics will be the de
facto standard in the next two or three years," said Iain
Hanlon, a Barclays executive.

A bigger part of voiceprint usage is by clients of banks to get
access to financial services. Providers say recognition
technology now is accurate enough to ensure accurate positive
confirmation.

"We've done a lot of testing, and looked at siblings, even
twins," said John Buhl, executive at Vanguard Group, a
Pennsylvania-based mutual fund.

"Even people with colds, like I have today, we looked at
that," he said in a somewhat hoarse voice in a phone
interview.

Sometimes bank clients may not even suspect that voiceprint
recognition is in effect. For example, two major US banks,
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., use a voice
screening system provided by matching the voiceprints of people
calling them against a database of fraud suspects to prevent
identity theft.

Of course, running the system in secret may be frowned upon and
may be even illegal in some states. AP cites a legal document
dated August 2013, in which the Israel-based biometrics company
NICE Systems Ltd. advises its bank clients on giving legal ground
for creating a consortium of companies that would share a
blacklist of voiceprints.

The memo suggests altering the welcome message to include a
notice that the call “may be monitored, recorded and
processed for quality assurance and fraud prevention
purposes."

"Creating a voiceprint from the call falls under
'processing,'" the memo explains. "Sharing the
voiceprints within the consortium is for the purposes of fraud
prevention."

Governments are catching up with the corporate world, too. In the
US, voiceprints are used to monitor inmates and track offenders
on parole – a landline phone call may substitute a visit to the
precinct. New Zealand has collected over 1 million voiceprints,
which are used by the Internal Revenue Department. South Africa’s
Social Security Agency pays pensions to roughly 7 million people
after verifying via a voiceprint that the recipient is still
alive.

Privacy advocates are expectedly concerned with giving
governments or corporation more info to play with. Voiceprint
popularity is a potential surveillance tool, they say.

"It's more mass surveillance," said Sadhbh McCarthy, an
Irish privacy researcher. "The next thing you know, that will
be given to border guards, and you'll need to speak into a
microphone when you get back from vacation."